The reader's guide to the Encyclopaedia Britannica

by Inc. Encyclopaedia Britannica

An Intimate Book

The old idea of an encyclopaedia as a remote book, distant from every-day needs and the real public questions of the day, and to be consulted only for information about ancient history and medieval philosophy, was a wrong one. It was wrong in theory, if an encyclopaedia is to be a live and valuable book. And it was wrong in practice. It is not the case with the new Britannica. For the Britannica is full of information about current public questions; and even its treatment of the past, remote or near, is from a fresh and modern view-point, and is of the utmost value as throwing the light of history on the problems of modern politics and every-day life. The spirit of to-day is an intensely wide-awake and inquisitive one, and people are no longer willing to believe that “whatever is, is right”—much less that a thing is right because it has been, no matter how long. Indeed the very phrase “has been” as now used in the vernacular implies the outworn, the discarded. The Britannica, a book for intimate use on the questions of the day, is a record of what is, as well as of what has been, and of the great changes, the constant flux, of the past and of the present.

Sociology

One of our symptoms of health is the development of a social sense, or, better, a social conscience. This is due in no small degree to the work of Herbert Spencer in founding a new science, called by him Sociology. For an inspiring and stimulating starting-point for the study in the Britannica of the great social and political questions of the day let the reader study the article Sociology (Vol. 25, p. 322), by Benjamin Kidd, who wrote Social Evolution, and Principles of Western Civilization.

Education

Evolution, sociology, Spencerian psychology and the closer relation of the state to the individual are all important factors in the educational changes of the last few years; and their study is indispensable to a clear understanding of the great questions of education. A more concrete study may be based on the article Education (Vol. 8, p. 951) and particularly the part on education in the United States by Nicholas Murray Butler, president of Columbia University. An elaborate course of reading on education is given in another chapter of this Guide For Teachers. But it may be well to call attention here to the fact that there are in the articles on individual states sections on the educational system of each state; and in the separate articles on each city similar descriptions of schools in those cities; and also that either in the article on the city or town in which it is situated, or in a separate article there is an estimate, a description, and a historical sketch of each of the great universities and colleges of the country. This information is not merely of value if one wishes to understand in a general way the trend of education, but of particular interest to one who is choosing the school best adapted to a special need. In the same way there are articles on other great educational institutions—for example a general article on Museums of Science (Vol. 19, p. 64) and one on Libraries (Vol. 16, p. 545), as well as articles on such special institutions as the Smithsonian, or treatment of them in the article on the places where the institution is—as in the article on Washington for the Library of Congress, the article on New York City for the Metropolitan Museum, etc.

Defectives and Their Training

But government, particularly in America, besides taking a direct interest and responsibility in the education of its youth, has begun within the last few years to assume the task of uplifting those of its citizens who are below the normal. Modern methods of dealing with criminals and of caring for defectives and the insane are based on a principle entirely different from that which obtained 50, or even 20, years ago. The whole article Insanity (Vol. 14, p. 597) might well be read as a preliminary to a study of this topic, since it treats of idiocy and imbecility as well as of the more violent forms of mental disorder, and since it treats them all as forms of disease—the basis of the modern method of treatment which has substituted the hospital and the school for the mere place of detention. In particular, however, the last part of this article dealing with Hospital Treatment should be studied. It is by Dr. Frederick Peterson, the American specialist, and it describes the improved conditions of modern asylums. “Physical restraint is no longer practised.... The general progress of medical science in all directions has been manifested in the department of psychiatry by improved methods of treatment, in the way of sleep-producing and alleviating drugs, dietetics, physical culture, hydrotherapy and the like. There are few asylums now without pathological and clinical laboratories.... The colony scheme has been successfully adopted by the state of New York at the Craig Colony for Epileptics at Sonyea and elsewhere.... Many asylums have, as it were, thrown off detached cottages for the better care of certain patients.... But the ideal system is that of the psychopathic hospital and the colony for the insane.” It is with the “colony” plan that Dr. Peterson’s name is intimately connected, especially in New York state. In the Britannica article on New York state there is a full treatment (Vol. 19, p. 601) of the state’s charitable institutions, including its hospitals for the insane, the Craig Colony already mentioned, the Letchworth Village custodial asylum for epileptics and feeble-minded, and other institutions of the same kind. And in the same way the system in each state is described in the separate article on that state with special attention to the peculiar features in its administration of its hospitals and schools for insane and imbeciles.

The Blind

There has been a similar change in the education of the blind and the deaf—or rather education is now provided for these classes, whereas they formerly received none at all. And this education is coming under state control and, once under governmental supervision, is being transferred from departments in charge of penal or charitable institutions to the department of public schools. For the most striking instances of what has been accomplished by improved systems of training under private supervision see the articles on Samuel Gridley Howe (Vol. 13, p. 837), the great teacher of the blind at the Perkins Institution for the Blind in Boston; on his blind and deaf pupil, Laura Bridgman (Vol. 4, p. 559), and on Helen Adams Keller (Vol. 15, p. 718), another and even more remarkable blind and deaf student, whose education, coming as a product of a new sociology, has made her a most efficient social helper and social worker.